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He didn’t want to answer.
Roman knew exactly the night Anya referred to. He and Celeste had been sitting at a pavement café and waiting for her friend to arrive.
‘Why don’t you want to come to the ballet?’ Celeste had asked.
‘I just...’ He had shrugged.
‘We’re breaking up, aren’t we?’ Celeste had reached over and kissed him. ‘It’s okay, Roman, we agreed to two years.’
And those two years would have soon been over. But Celeste had just found out that she was seriously ill and had had only six months to live.
He had taken a drink of his coffee and his decision had been made.
‘I’m not leaving you to face this alone.’
He had taken her hand.
‘I’ll be with you all the way through this,’ he had promised, and it had been sealed with a tender kiss.
A kiss that, it turned out, Anya had witnessed.
‘Why?’ Anya demanded. ‘Why did you not come and see me perform? Didn’t you care?’
‘No,’ Roman said. ‘I promised that I would be faithful to my wife. To watch you dance would have felt like an affair.’
It was the only glimpse he gave her that, through the years, feelings had remained.
She didn’t understand him and he gave her nothing that might bring her closer to doing so. ‘Why haven’t you told Daniil that you are in London?’ Anya challenged.
‘You don’t know that I haven’t.’
‘Yes, I do because I was at Daniil’s this afternoon,’ Anya said.
Roman said nothing but she saw his jaw grit as she made it clear that she and his brother were in touch.
‘He is married...’ she told him.
‘I read in the news.’
‘They have a new baby.’
‘I read about that too.’
‘He still searches for you,’ Anya said. ‘He doesn’t know if you are alive or dead.’
‘Did you not tell him that you saw me in Paris?’
‘No,’ Anya said. She hadn’t told Daniil because she wished that she had never seen Roman sitting in the sun and kissing a woman that had not been her. ‘Perhaps I shall tell him next time I see him,’ she taunted. ‘Did you know that your niece gets christened next Sunday?’
She watched as his eyes shuttered.
‘You might have erased your past when you joined the legion but we all live on. Your niece’s name is Nadia...’
‘Anya...’ He put up his hand to halt her but she refused to be silenced.
‘Oh, and Sev will be there, with his new wife Naomi...’ She could hear his heavy breathing as she bombarded him with names from his past.
People he had loved yet had chosen to never contact again.
‘Nikolai is coming. You remember he loved ships, well, he has a superyacht now...’
‘You lie,’ Roman said. ‘Don’t you remember?’ He looked at her. ‘Of course not, you were off at dance school, but Nikolai ran away and committed suicide.’
They had been such dark, painful times. Roman could still remember the night that they had been informed that Nikolai’s body had been pulled from the river.
He had asked if he might speak with Sev, because he’d known that he would be devastated. After all, Nikolai and Sev had been best friends.
That request had been denied and Roman had been locked in his room instead. He hadn’t cried, he hadn’t even known how to, but that night, thinking of the torture that must have been in Nikolai’s head, he had been the closest he had ever come to breaking down.
Now Anya was here, telling him that Nikolai was alive.
‘Nikolai ran away, but the body they pulled from the river wasn’t his,’ Anya said.
Roman kept his feelings hidden—he always had—and his time in the legion had honed that skill, but hearing Nikolai was alive, that all his friends would be together next Sunday, meant it took everything he possessed to keep his voice level.
‘And shall you be there?’
Anya nodded. ‘I am coming back from Paris just for the day.’
‘Coming back?’
‘We go there tomorrow.’
‘We?’
‘The dance company.’
He wanted to ask about Mika, yet he did not.
Tonight was a one-night stand, for old times’ sake, Roman told himself.
There was another knock on the door, and they were told that the car was there to take her to her leaving party.
‘It can wait!’ Anya called back.
‘You ought to go,’ he said. ‘Or you’ll have your mother calling me a saboteur again.’
‘She died, Roman,’ Anya said. ‘And please don’t offer a false apology.’
‘I shan’t.’
He hated Katya, more than even Anya could know.
‘I will leave you to get ready for your party.’
‘So we just have sex and you leave?’ she challenged, and then she gave a derisive laugh. ‘Nothing changes, does it?’
She watched as he checked his reflection in the mirror. She knew it was for her sake, walking out wearing her make-up would not be a good look, but his unruffled demeanour incensed her.
He smoothed his hair back and straightened his tie, and with a tissue he removed a little of her make-up that had smeared onto his face.
As he went to give her cheek a kiss Anya pulled her head back, but just as he reached the door she called him back.
There was something she just had to know.
‘How did you meet your wife?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Roman said.
‘It does to me. I want to know,’ she said. ‘Was it love at first sight, or was it her money you wanted? Tell me, Roman, how did you meet?’
‘I answered an advert. She was looking for a husband.’
And with that sordid revelation he might as well have ripped out her heart and stamped on it. Rather than search for her, he had simply answered an ad.
‘Bastard!’
‘Yep,’ Roman said.
‘You’re a whore, Roman,’ Anya swore. ‘I hate you.’
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Because I made a life for myself?’
She did not answer. Yes, she hated him for making a life that did not include her and she would never forgive him for marrying another woman. ‘Come on, Anya.’ He touched on a subject he did not necessarily want to discuss. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t seen anyone.’
‘Of course I have,’ she said. ‘Do you really think I kept myself on ice for you?’
She lied.
There had been no one else.
Dance was all she had.
She had not just kept herself on ice, she had turned into it. No one could ever come close to the memory of him and so she held onto it and held back from others.
‘It was good to see you, Roman,’ she said. ‘Please don’t expect a repeat performance in Paris. I would prefer it if you stayed away.’ She turned to head to the shower, but then changed her mind. ‘You need to let your twin know you are alive, or I shall. You chose to reappear,’ she said. ‘I shan’t keep any secrets for you from now on.’ She told him Daniil’s address. ‘He changed his name a couple of years ago, so that you might find him. I can’t believe you have not spent every day searching for him.’
Then she looked at a man who had simply turned his back on the life they could have had, and, yes, actually she could believe it.
‘I hope she was worth it.’
‘Worth what?’
The end of them.
‘Go,’ Anya said.
She wanted him to leave now.
And, because it was Roman, just like that, he went.
It was pride that stopped her calling him back.
* * *
She stepped into the shower and quickly dressed for her after party.
Blasting her hair with the dryer, it fell softly around her face. Her hands were still shaking from their brief reunion.
She pulled on a pale grey dress and some heels and then headed out.
Colour she saved for the stage.
‘Where were you?’ Mika asked, as she climbed into the limousine to head to the hotel where the party was being held.
‘I had people to greet.’
They sat in silence, Anya lost in her thoughts. Mika was sulking at being kept waiting and he read what was being said on social media about tonight’s performance. They ignored each other but as they stepped out onto the red carpet they came alive again, for it added to the mystery of the dance world. There were screams for Mika, because he had quite a fangirl following. Mika, though, put a protective arm around Anya and they smiled for the cameras and then headed inside.
Instead of refusing the delicacies that were being offered, as she usually did, Anya took a serviette and a small beignet and bit into the warm, sweet dough.
There were a few raised eyebrows when she took another and then another. The lemon in her water was her usual fuel for this type of thing.
But sex had made her hungry, or was it that Roman was back?
Yes, the people around could see the changes. Not just that she ate but that her cheeks were pink and her green eyes glittered.
After all these years, her body felt alive again and yet he had killed her soul.
The next morning as the famed ballet troupe headed for a snatched week at home or straight on to Paris before rehearsals began in earnest, Anya fought with herself not to stop the car and get out.
Roman was in London.
And as she sat on the plane and strapped on her seat belt she wanted to disembark. It felt wrong to be leaving when he was here.
She turned away from the chatter of colleagues and stared out of the window and thought of Roman and Daniil catching up after all these years, and then she thought of what had taken place last night.
Then, despite harsh words to Roman and a brutal lecture to herself, insisting that she was through with him, she consoled herself with one thought.
